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The headshot event was a success. That’s the most important thing, I have to say about it, so I’ll say it first. In one day, I happily serviced about 50 people, taking their portrait, so they could use it on LinkedIn, Facebook, with their acting agent or where ever a headshot might come in handy. It took me a while to write this final post about it, simply because I wanted to finish it first. Which I have. All the photos have been retouched and e-mailed out to the participants.

I originally offered 100 free headshots and later raised that number to 120, but I was happy to see that on the day of, there were no enormous lines, no chaos and thus, no catastrophes. Instead, there was a small initial rush of people who had been waiting around, followed by a slow trickle. Much more along the lines of what I had originally imagined, rather than the craziness I had feared, after news of the event had been on television.

I brought two assistants with me, Kelly handled sign-up, answered people’s questions and was my representative, while I was busy shooting. Justin took care of herding people, ran communication between me and Kelly, and stood by to jump in where ever needed. Once the initial rush was over, I could have probably done it with one helper, but again, I had no idea how many would come, and I was happy to be covered.

I set up two monolights and a fold-out muslin background on a tiny stage at the coffee shop. Behind the muslin were two windows, which we covered in paper, and to shield the shooting station from prying eyes, we also set up a roll of seamless paper as a wall along the side. By positioning the key light opposite of the white paper wall, that also doubled as a reflector.

I decided to handle the process of the photos like this: Each subject got 5-10 frames. I did not give people the option to pick their own photo, simply because the logistics of that would be overwhelming, and I would end up spending way too much time on the project. So, I picked what I deemed the best shot in each case. Photoshopping began with a rough RAW-processing, which I copied from one image to all of them. Then came the painstaking task of finalizing each image.

After tweaking the copy/pasted RAW adjustments, I then softened lines and deep wrinkles, particularly on the women, several of whom told me straight up, that they were worried about this. I also boosted the contrast using a pulled-back overlay layer, tweaked colors further to match the individual skin tones, and removed blemishes, zits and skin flakes. What I did not do, was to drastically alter the look of the person in front of the camera. If the hair was all over the place, I did not try to fix it. If there was a mole on the cheek, I did not remove it (though I did make sure it cast no harsh shadows). In other words, I cleaned up without changing anything. It took me two full days to process all the photos.

All in all, the charity headshot event cost me about a week’s worth of work and a few hundred bucks. Money was primarily spent on the muslin background and various signs, prints and accessories. Kelly deserves huge credit here, taking care of all the signage, including a customized ticket system with a print release on the back, and everything needed to keep the event organized.

I want to make it painfully clear, that I did not do this to get media attention. In fact, I never sent out a single press release. The only media I contacted directly was West Seattle Blog, who helped me pinpoint the venue for the event. However, my reasons for doing the headshots were not entirely selfless.

Part of it was to promote the 12 Seattleites project, which I have picked up again, now that the headshots are done. I needed to get the word out about this project to attract more volunteer subjects, and though I have yet to determine the degree of success with that, it did attract a few new names to my pool of potentials. And if the headshot event ends up attracting me a few paying clients too, I’m certainly not going to turn them away.

As a sidenote, it was kind of funny that three networks showed up to cover the event. Total overkill, considering its smallness, but if the news-reports can inspire others to give a little back as well, then it will have been worth it (see the report from Q13 Fox below). And on a related note, check out the Help Portrait project, launched right after I finished the headshots. The two are not related, except in spirit.

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